The exchange of viewpoints between Silesian-Prussian Schwenckfeldians and Lutherans in Prussia lasted since 1525 till 1544. It was a part of the discourse undertaken by reformational communities about the need for reform of the church and its religious direction. Both sides put forth their views and arguments supporting their religious stance. This article shows the family relations between the princes Fredrick II of Legnica and Albert of Prussia, this relation helped to establish contact between those circles. Political ties and the issue of ideological consensus regarding support for reformational changes are also under discussion here. The earliest indication of contact between them is dated at spring 1522 and the most intense expression of said contacts would be the diplomatic involvement of Fredrick II, representing Albert of Prussia, in negotiations with the Polish King regarding the Prussian fief during the 1524-1525 period. When in June 1525 the Prussian bishop Paul Speratus initiated contacts the reformation in Legnica was already moving into new phase, the “Schwenckfeldian reformation”, this happened due to influence of Kaspar von Schwenckfeld. This author’s focus then moved to the exchange of opinions via mail during phase one of the discourse (1525-1528). Schwenckfeld engaged in the exchange from Legnica while Speratus from Prussia. Schwenkfeld also mailed Albrecht directly. He referenced their conversations from 1524-1525, regarding the reformation of the Church, explaining the meaning of changes he introduced. Altogether thirteen letters, along with appended treaties became the subject of analysis.
The article concerns the further history of religious discourse between the Silesian-Prussian Schwenckfeldians and Lutherans after 1529 in Prussia, other reformation circles joined in it as well. The arrival of duke Fredrick von Heydeck, a close political associate of Albert of Prussia, in the Legnica duchy in 1529 happened at an important stage. While in Silesia, Heydeck adopted the Schwenckfeldian spiritualism and, upon his return to Prussia in 1530, he arrived with Schwenckfeldian clerics, inviting them to take over parishes of his counties, Lötzen and Johannisburg in Prussia. That caused a vivid reaction of Pomesania bishop Speratus, who in June 1531 summoned those clerics to the Synod at Rastenburg for the purpose of asking them questions about the principles of their faith. Some of them, such as Peter Zanker and Georg Landmesser, put their declarations of faith in written form. In December 1531 duke Albert summoned both the most important among the Lutheran clergy and the key followers of Prussian Schwenckfeldian spiritualism. The latter were supported in the issue of the Rastenburg meeting by a cleric from Legnica, Fabian Eckel. Due to Duke Albert’s refusal to publically condemn the Schwenckfeldians, bishop Speratus was not pleased with these talks. He requested Martin Luther’s intervention. In 1532 he sent a public letter to the duke. This provoked a response from the clerics of Zurich, who joined in on the religious dispute in Prussia, sending Albrecht a letter-treaty from Heinrich Bullinger. The Schwenckfeldian movement in Prussia started to die out in 1535. Among the reasons were Heydeck’s death and change in duke’s religious policy, resulting from mounting internal difficulties relating to the political consolidation of the Prussian states.
The Early Modern Period in formation of the political and social order is marked by the formation, in the beginning of said epoch, of distinct institutions and offices for the purpose of ruling Silesia, pan-Silesian, estate and ducal in various jurisdictions in Silesia, said system – with changes introduced in the absolute reign after 1629 – survived until 1740. Factors which influenced the perception of being separate among the social and political elite of Silesia were the institutions forming for the purpose of administrating the country in the time when links with the Bohemian Crown were weakened, especially in the latter part of the 15th and beginnings of the 16th century. This influenced the formation of Silesian institutions as having a great deal of autonomy in regards to the rule of the king and other institutions of the monarchy. The distinctly Silesian social structure was also influential in forming the distinctiveness of Silesian institutions. Formation of regions was also influenced by the institutional and political structure of the monarchy, which was comprised of five countries, all of which had their own estate representation, and comprised nearly all, available in those times, aspects of governing the society. The Thirty Years’ War became the caesura of Silesian regionalism: the monarchy managed to marginalise the Silesian political regionalism, although reforms after 1629 maintained the administrational and institutional regional system of Silesia.
The distinct Silesian social structure, especially its unique ruling group of dukes, territorial rulers as well as heterogeneous groups of higher Silesian nobility, incompatible with the ruling lords of the Bohemian and Moravian lands constituted estate asymmetry when compared to the other lands of the Bohemian Crown. It became a factor detrimental to the formation of social relations at a level higher than regional. Other reasons for the growth of Silesian regionalism in the social context were political by nature, in the 16th and beginnings of the 17th centuries and were the consequences of the centralising policies of the Habsburg monarchy. These were realised in the approval for the Bohemian political agenda, in granting the highest legal and social status in the monarchy and choosing only its members for offices in the central institutions of the monarchy. This marginalised the socio-political importance of Silesian upper classes and their confinement within the region. The Silesian dukes countered this socio-political alienation in the Bohemian Crown by extending their prestige through marrying abroad, with the houses of the Holy Roman Empire. That became an additional factor disruptive to the social structure of the monarchy. Although groups of higher Silesian nobility had the potential for tendencies for integration, opposition from the Bohemian nobles meant that their approach until the year 1619 was a combination of pro-monarchic and pro-regional approach, while simultaneously including the tendency to individually include themselves in the group of the Bohemian-Moravian rulers. For the population of the Silesian land, including the lower gentry and the townsfolk, who were only in a small extent affected by the common legal solutions, the state division was merely a framework within which heterogeneous communities with individual social and legal rules still functioned.
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